Social scientists are concerned that many measures of children's physical and emotional health are inadequate, misleading, or outdated, leaving policymakers ill-informed. This book provides an inquiry into current efforts to monitor children from the prenatal period through adolescence. Working with the most up-to-date statistical sources, experts…

"Westhills" is a multiethnic coastal community in San Diego County, California, in which Mexican Americans comprise approximately 22 percent of the population. This book reports ethnographic research on a group of working-class Chicana adolescents in one Westhills barrio and their problems, school experiences, immersion in two…

Many adolescents need basic health care and other services that address risky behaviors such as sexual activity, violence, alcohol and drug abuse, and the consequences of these behaviors. This publication summarizes laws and resolutions on adolescent health issues passed in 1997 state and territory legislative sessions. No 1997 legislative session…

This study modifies and expands on earlier research in an effort to incorporate an examination of consultant's sex as an instrumental dimension in determining children's and adolescents' consultant preferences. It was hypothesized that: (1) children would prefer same-sex consultants, and this preference would continue for female adolescents; (2)…

This interim guide, a component of the Northwest Territories (Canada) School Health Program, contains instructional strategies, lesson plans, reproducibles, and teacher background materials for eighth grade classes. The material is organized around the three curriculum units: mental and emotional well-being, growth and development, and family…

The purposes of this study were to compare adolescents' and parents' perceptions of parental demands, responsiveness, and commitment to achievement, and to explore the relations between these perceptions and the adolescents' school achievement. The subjects were ninth grade students and their parents. The adolescents and their mothers and fathers…

This "report card" grades the state of education, health, special needs services, and economic security among Illinois children in 1993. Illinois ranked 38th out of the 50 states in financial contribution per student for education, but had a high disparity in revenues per pupil at the county level, thus earning a "D+" grade for…

This report describes the results of a regional needs assessment of workforce issues related to the delivery of community-based services for children and adolescents with serious emotional disturbance or mental illness and their families in a region comprising 12 southern states. The assessment involved a survey of key stakeholders, principally…

This book provides theoretical and practical information to meet the challenge of individualizing instruction for gifted and talented adolescents of different learning styles and different cultural backgrounds. Part 1 consists of six chapters that present the broad theoretical background of giftedness and learning style. It includes the following…

Two papers address different issues in linguistic theory. "Attitudes, Norms and Standardization in English: Some Aspects of the Language In Its Social Context," by Bent Preisler, looks at how attitudes affect language norms and ultimately, standardization in British and U.S. English. It begins with the attitudes and communicative…

This report envisions Texas schools using one another as resources and the campus planning process as a vehicle for implementing research-based concepts and practices in the middle grades. Since Texas' restructuring effort will not succeed without commitment to staff development from all levels of the education community, the need for teacher and…

This longitudinal study describes the influence of family, friends, community organizations, and school on the educational and employment experiences of 146 immigrant adolescent Latinos in Washington (District of Columbia) between 1982 and 1988. All had attended a special high school for at-risk immigrant youth. The following key findings are…

This publication is the second report, tailored to a non-specialist audience, of five country case studies under the Urban Child Program of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) International Child Development Center. The crisis of unprotected children and adolescents in Brazil has developed along with rapid industrialization and great…

A 3-year program was implemented in eight middle schools in the Charleston County School District (South Carolina) in fall 1986 to cope with high rates of student misconduct. The program sought to improve the clarity of school rules and the consistency of rule enforcement, classroom organization and management, frequency of communication to the…

Descriptions of several programs of the Shawnee Hills Community Mental Health/Mental Retardation Center, Inc. (Charleston, West Virginia) are presented. Included in this document are: (1) a description of the Shawnee Hills Day Training Center, a cooperative program of Shawnee Hills and several county school boards for severely/profoundly impaired…